Food Sustainability PSA
Which Diet is More Sustainable: Plant-based or Meat-based?
What is a Plant-based Diet?
A plant-based diet is a diet where you primarily eat organic plant material. The most common version of this type of diet is called a “Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian” these diets enable individuals to meet basic nutrient needs, but at the same time, it requires you to consume more food than a meat-based diet.
What is a Meat-based Diet?
A meat-based diet is a diet where you eat meat primarily. If you eat according to this diet you will eat other organic materials as well. Most people in the Americas follow this diet, which happens to be called an omnivorous diet. It does, however, cost more to produce this diet.
Which of These Diets is Easier to Sustain?
The diet that is more easily sustainable is the plant-based diet. The plant-based diet effects the environment significantly less than the meat-based diet does. If we just think through this imagine the environmental effects of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of cows in one cattle field.
Environmental Effects of Agriculture:
Your Food-print!
- If you consume 0g of meat your yearly intake covers 0.5 acres.
- The amount of meat added to your yearly intake makes your coverage of land grow almost exponentially.
Foreign Chemical Ingested from Processed Meat.
- Anti-oxidants
- Growth Hormones
- Antibacterial Drugs
- Salmonella
Environmental Effects.
US food production uses about:
50% of the total US land area.
80% of the fresh water.
17% of the fossil fuel energy.
- Because they use fossil fuels most, neither of these diets are truly sustainable.